I think there is a pretty easy hack to making tax cuts unappealing to billionaires: pass a law that says each tax payer receives the exact same amount back.
Pass a 4 trillion dollar tax cut that works out to $4000/tax payer? Congrats, billionaires. Enjoy your 4k.
Every republican voted no. See whats happening here?
UBI with extra steps. I like it
$4000 in the U.S. might be enough for a shitty car
edit, don't get stuck adjusting the points on that trash carb. just fucking walk.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that the super rich actually have a high conventional income normally. Most of their wealth would be from investments and stock.
A neat trick with that is that they can take out loans against their stock to buy superyachts, governments, and other toys and that’s not only not income, the interest is tax deductible. Plus there are other tricks like S Corps to shield them. So, this isn’t as useful as it would suggest (not that we shouldn’t tax >100m at 99% or something just to make the point.)
You're not wrong.
But keep cutting their taxes and they can have more conventional income in addition to everything else.
It's called "Buy, Borrow, Die", and that's exactly what they do. They buy or inherit assets, hold them indefinitely, because they have no monetary value until sold, and take out loans using those assets as collateral. Then they just pay the interest on the loans, and then play with the money. Southern slave owners were doing a similar thing before Emancipation. The lax rules of Southern banking even allowed them to take out multiple loans on a single slave.
We need a maximum wealth cap. I want to see a world where you are literally not allowed to have a net worth over a certain amount. I believe capitalism has its place, but unconstrained capitalism leads to innumerable social ills. You want to let people get rich enough to provide an incentive to get educated, work hard, start businesses, and innovate. But you do not want enough wealth that individuals or small groups of individuals can become a threat to society. We don't allow individuals to own nuclear weapons, regardless of how virtuous they may be. We decided long ago that private ownership of nuclear weapons is simply too much power in the hands of one individual.
Yet with enough wealth, an individual can create human misery equivalent to a nuclear weapon. For example, Elon Musk has a net worth of $400 billion. If he chose to, could spend his fortune on destroying the lives of 400,000 people. He could select his victims based on whatever criteria he chose. And he could spend $1 million per person simply hiring lawyers to make their lives Hell. Target them with frivolous lawsuits. Even if he never won a case, he could drive them into bankruptcy through legal fees alone. Or, he could pick a city of a million people and dedicate his fortune to just ruining that city. He could deliberately fund the campaigns of the worst candidates imaginable, and offer them enormous fortunes to deliberately destroy that city. Wealth is power, and power is wealth. They are equivalent and interchangeable. If you want to have a democracy, you cannot have unrestricted wealth.
I would set the wealth cap for any nation at 1000x the median household income of that nation, averaged over a certain number of years. In the US, that would be at this time about $80 million. That is a level of wealth even the most skilled and high-paid of lawyers or physicians, if they worked til the grave, lived like a pauper, and invested everything else, would still struggle to reach by the time of their death. The only way people reach that level of wealth is by leveraging the labor of others. And it is a level of wealth far, far above the level where increasing wealth continues to meaningfully increase happiness. That level of wealth is only useful to a person if that person seeks to manipulate and control other human beings.
We need a maximum wealth cap. Beyond a certain level of wealth, everything is taxed at 100%. I think 1000x the median household income is a good place to set that level. And I think that is extremely generous. I don't care what the former billionaires do with their extra income that would put them above this level. They could simply retire when they hit the cap. They could donate it to charity. They could give it all to their extended families. They could give it to their employees. They could hold grand parties in their home city every year that rivaled the excesses of ancient Rome. They could spend it all on giant yachts. Ultimately, I don't care. The core problem is the concentration of wealth and power in a small number of individuals. Any method of spreading out that wealth will avoid this problem. Even if they just give it all to their extended families, it would still be for the best. If Elon Musk wants to divvy up his fortune to his 5,000 closest family and friends, so be it. Even if every one of them was as much of a bastard as he was, at least they'll have conflicting interests, and few of them will want to see anyone appointed dictator.
We need a maximum wealth cap. Forget taxing incomes. Forget a wealth tax. We need to drive a dagger into the heart of the evil that haunts our society. The world does not need billionaires. We can have the benefits of efficiency and innovation that come with a free market without letting wealth concentrate to the point of farce. We can provide an incentive for people to work and discover without allowing individuals to become a threat to nation states. Even if you believe in the myth of visionary capitalist geniuses, we don't need billionaires. If Musk is already capped out on wealth, the board of SpaceX can still hire him as CEO. He can still enjoy the social status as influence of being the CEO of SpaceX, he just has to dispose of that wealth each year however he chooses.
1000x the median household income. No one should be able to have a fortune larger than this.
How about this: anything over said wealth cap is automatically used to fund education, health initiatives, as well as fight poverty and homelessness.
Also, politicians need a wealth cap; ie no stock trading while in office, or for 5 years after leaving office. Divest all ties to any business they have before taking office. They must also be prohibited from taking any job that has any relation to the government for at least 5 years after leaving office. All politicians must pay for their own health insurance.
How about this: anything over said wealth cap is automatically used to fund education, health initiatives, as well as fight poverty and homelessness.
Honestly, I agree with the top comment, and is already implied by the top comment with the 100% tax. If they want to cash it out (before that assessment, or when they're close to it) and burn it in a big pile instead of giving it to anybody in tax or charity, let them do it. It'll still have a positive effect through deflation.
All politicians must pay for their own health insurance.
lol, no. Everybody gets free health insurance. The end. That's the way to go on that.
When people hit 10mil, they should prestiege. Give them a fancy title or add-on to their name, take all their wealth and tell them to do it again to hit the next prestiege. Easy fix, gives the 1% the sense of pride and accomplishment they deserve.
They've bootstrapped once, they can do it again.
I'd also add that companies/government offices should not be permitted to pay any employee more than 100x the annual income of their lowest paid employee. If the owners/executives want to further enrich themselves, they must first enrich those whose labor they profit from.
Include stock incentives in that as well. If executives are offered stock packages in lieu of part of their pay to try to get around this rule, require that proportional offers must also be made to all other employees based on level of income.
Jesus Christ we just need you lads to not let them lynch minorities. Start there
There's like 10 people in the entire fucking world making more than 500 mil a year.
More like 700 in the US alone.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/retirement/how-many-billionaires-and-millionaires-live-in-the-u-s/
700 people having a net worth of over a billion and 700 people making half a billion a year are very different.
Dividends for some of those billionaires can pay out over 500mil easily. Hide money however they want, we need a wealth tax no matter how it's sliced.
I've been saying it.
Every year, we should take the wealthiest person and reclaim 50% of their assets. Congrats, you've scum sucked enough blood out of people, we're taking 50% of it back. We'll build a "This year's biggest winner" statue in your honor with some of the funds.
also prevent people from getting that rich in the first place. new tax brackets: 50% for every dollar over a million. 75% for every dollar over 10 mil. 90% over 50mil. and 100% over 100mil. congrats that's the high score. maxed out.
also make ALL INCOME to count as income, not just direct payment.
I like the cut of your jib.
Make the size of the statue inversely proportional to the number of people employed by those assets.
The trick was seeing what was going on before trying to "teach the dems a lesson". Now all you can do is ride the train and wait for endless lawsuits to playout with disingenuous participants
Nixon was already impeached by now
It's great that my taxes are going up so they can have even more.
Does anyone have a link to the proposed amendment and the vote on it?
I believe this is regarding the proposed budget by the House Budget Committee.
Yeah, I just can’t seem to find their proposed amendments. Maybe because they weren’t considered or something? I’ll have to see if I can find the cspan section. I just want a snippet to show my family where Republicans are voting lockstep to protect wealthy people.
Awesome thank you so much!!
What's going on is that you have FAFO'd that you should never have compromised with the GOP like we fucking told you
Damn it’s almost as if they’re debating in bad faith because they get money from their wealthy constituents
Curious if they tried blocking taxation on anyone BELOW a certain income level.
Honestly, I really don't understand why a populist left party doesn't pursue this.
No tax on income below $100K and no tax on wealth, property and inheritance below $1M.
Or choose some other figures.
It seems like it would be a slam dunk to get voter support.
There are several very similar issues that are all slam dunks, and the fact that they aren't pursued by the Democrat party is proof that they are part of the same capitalist gang as the GOP. There is no voter that would be against banning lobbyist bribery from corporations, but that is never a campaign point. The few progressive voices that we have still insist that they have to work from within the Democrat party and there is simply no way that they will ever gain any foothold that way. I insist that right now, when the Democrat party is the most powerless, is the time for progressives to break off into their own party while they are seated in Congress. The Democrat Party can join or die.
This isn't unheard of, though the income figure is usually lower. In my country it's some 14k I think? The tax is still quite low for the next income bracket though.
No tax on income below $100K and no tax on wealth, property and inheritance below $1M.
With UBI, it is possible to have a flat tax where corporate and lowest personal tax rates are the same. Without payroll taxes. That means that employment can be tax free as long as business doesn't get a tax deduction, though they still can if they lose money in a year.
There can be surtaxes on incomes above $100k, but they would appear to be very small, when personal income taxes are hidden this way.
TIL the US doesn't have a tax free threshold?
There is, but you just get everything back as a refund. They still take taxes out of your paycheck.
This seems pretty punitive, considering the poorest in society need the money immediately, not as a lump sum refund once per year.
Here (Australia) the tax free threshold is baked into your tax withholding amount.
Thieves in the bank offices
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